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USN-8729-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Ubuntu issued USN-8729-1 fixing Linux kernel vulnerabilities across ARM, Bluetooth, GPU, SCSI, SMB, and Azure MANA subsystems.

Ubuntu released USN-8729-1 addressing several security issues discovered in the Linux kernel that could allow an attacker to compromise the system. Fixes span ARM32/ARM64/PowerPC architectures, Bluetooth, GPU, InfiniBand, and network drivers, plus the Microsoft Azure Network Adapter (MANA) driver. The update also corrects flaws in the SCSI and SPI subsystems, SMB and NTFS3 file systems, EFI core, and file systems infrastructure.

Ubuntu Security Notices · 9d agoAdvisory 6 sources

Linux Foundation takes on TRACE, a hardware-backed runtime evidence specification for AI agents

The Linux Foundation adopts TRACE, an OPAQUE-contributed spec giving AI agents hardware-attested, cryptographically verifiable runtime and compliance evidence.

The Linux Foundation accepted the TRACE (Trust, Runtime Attestation and Compliance Evidence) specification contributed by OPAQUE, developed with AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and the Technology Innovation Institute. TRACE binds runtime environment, software, policies, data classifications, and tool usage into a portable, cryptographically verifiable artifact, composing existing standards such as RATS, EAT, SLSA, SCITT, SPIFFE, and EAR. It recorded nearly 135,000 PyPI downloads within 10 weeks of its June 2026 introduction, and its technical workstream will be hosted by the Coalition for Secure AI.

Help Net Security · 21d agoAI tools & infra

Exclusive: Linux Foundation's Akrites to Go Live in September

The Linux Foundation's Akrites initiative will go live in September, accepting AI-powered vulnerability reports for open-source projects.

The Linux Foundation's Akrites initiative will become operational in September 2026, when it begins accepting AI-powered vulnerability reports for open-source projects. The launch was exclusively reported by Infosecurity Magazine. The program is aimed at handling vulnerability disclosures across the foundation's open-source ecosystem using AI capabilities.

Infosecurity Magazine · 28d agoTools

Linux Foundation Introduces TRACE Standard for AI Runtime Evidence

The Linux Foundation introduced TRACE, an open standard providing hardware-attested runtime and compliance evidence for AI agents.

The Linux Foundation announced TRACE, an open standard designed to generate hardware-attested runtime evidence for AI agents. The standard aims to give auditors and regulators verifiable proof of what AI agents actually executed. It targets compliance and assurance needs for organizations deploying autonomous AI systems.

Infosecurity Magazine · 21d agoAI tools & infra1

PoisonedRefresh: A Fileless Linux Rootkit That Injects PHP Web Shells Into F5 BIG-IP APM Server Memory

Sophos details PoisonedRefresh, a fileless Linux rootkit that injects a memory-resident PHP web shell into F5 BIG-IP APM after exploitation of CVE-2025-53521.

On September 8, 2026, SophosLabs published an analysis of Linux/Agnt-IC (dubbed PoisonedRefresh by ESET) found in compromised F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager environments. Initial access leverages CVE-2025-53521, an unauthenticated RCE in BIG-IP APM when an access policy is configured on a virtual server; F5 confirmed exploitation and links the activity to cluster c05d5254, while Shadowserver observed 795 exposed vulnerable endpoints. A first stage hidden in a modified umount binary modifies /usr/sbin/httpd and SELinux configuration and embeds itself in BIG-IP upgrade images for persistence. The second-stage ELF intercepts __libc_start_main, hooks apr_dso_load, and injects a PHP web shell into libphp memory via mmap manipulation, leaving no disk artifacts, and exposes a /bin/bash shell via a local UNIX domain socket instead of a TCP port.

Security Affairs · 7d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-53521

Linux Detection Engineering - Local Privilege Escalation

Elastic details a layered detection framework for Linux local privilege escalation, covering 2026's copy-on-write bug wave and LLM-assisted discovery.

Elastic Security Labs describes how most Linux local privilege escalations share a common host flow — an unprivileged process launched from a writable path becoming root — and proposes layered detections combining general outcome-based rules with per-technique rules in Elastic Defend and Auditd. It tracks 13 recent LPE disclosures, seven of which share a copy-on-write/zero-copy bug class, including Copy Fail, DirtyFrag, Fragnesia, DirtyDecrypt, DirtyClone, pedit COW, and RefluXFS. Qualys attributes RefluXFS to an LLM-assisted research effort with Anthropic using Claude Mythos Preview, and another bug is credited to an LLM-assisted workflow. Detection and endpoint rules are published in Elastic's detection-rules and protections-artifacts repositories.

Elastic Security Labs · 5d agoResearch

Hackers breach F5 BIG-IP APM devices to deploy Linux rootkit

Sophos analyzed a Linux rootkit on F5 BIG-IP APM devices that injects a fileless PHP web shell, likely after CVE-2025-53521 exploitation.

Sophos analyzed a Linux rootkit targeting F5 BIG-IP APM environments, also tracked by ESET as PoisonedRefresh, which hijacks Apache's apr_dso_load module loader to inject a fileless PHP web shell into memory. The implant intercepts __libc_start_main, hides strings with RC4, creates a password-protected local UNIX socket backdoor for interactive Bash access, and persists across BIG-IP upgrade images while modifying SELinux configuration. It is likely a second-stage payload following exploitation of CVE-2025-53521, a critical RCE flaw F5 reclassified from a DoS issue in March. The ShadowServer Foundation tracked 795 F5 BIG-IP APM endpoints exposed online.

BleepingComputer · 7d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-53521

Exclusive: Paying for frontier AI models buys 4-month head start at 5x the cost

Mozilla report finds the capability gap between best open-weights (largely Chinese) and closed frontier AI models narrowed to 4.4 months at ~5x lower cost.

Mozilla's State of Open Source AI report (September 15) says the gap between closed frontier models and best open-weights models has closed to 4.4 months. Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 scores three points behind Anthropic's Fable 5 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 30% of the cost, and Z.ai's GLM 5.2 scored within a point of Claude Opus 4.7 on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Eight of the top 10 OpenRouter models by August 2026 token volume provide open weights, though a Linux Foundation paper found open models earned only 4% of revenue. The report recommends open models as the default for routine workloads, reserving closed models for 8-12 hour expert tasks.

Ars Technica · AI · 1d agoAI industry1

Opaque recurrence, and other AI terms that you should probably know

TechCrunch updates its plain-English glossary defining common AI terms from AGI and agents to chain-of-thought reasoning.

TechCrunch maintains a regularly updated glossary of AI terminology, defining terms such as AGI, AI agents, API endpoints, chain of thought, coding agents, compute, deep learning, and diffusion. It highlights 'opaque recurrence', the reasoning technique in OpenAI's new Astra model that has drawn attention from AI safety researchers. The piece is an educational living document rather than new research or a product announcement.

TechCrunch · AI · 8d agoAI industry

Microsoft’s Project Zenith puts large AI models directly on developer PCs

Microsoft's Project Zenith delivers a ready-to-code Windows 11 experience running 30B+ parameter AI models locally on 64GB+ unified-memory PCs, starting with AMD Ryzen AI Halo.

Project Zenith is a preconfigured Windows 11 developer experience for PCs with at least 64 GB of unified memory and 250 GB/s or higher memory bandwidth, capable of running AI models with more than 30 billion parameters locally without metered cloud tokens. First systems are powered by AMD Ryzen AI Halo, with additional OEM and silicon partner devices expected in coming months. The environment ships with WSL and Linux containers, pinned developer tools, and day-one AI agent security features including OS-enforced agent identity and containment through Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC).

Help Net Security · 8d agoAI industry1

USN-8514-2: OpenSSH vulnerability

Ubuntu backports an OpenSSH fix to older LTS releases for an scp flaw enabling setuid file placement and privilege escalation.

USN-8514-2 extends the USN-8514-1 OpenSSH fix to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and 20.04 LTS. The flaw stems from incorrect file permission handling when downloading files as root using the legacy scp protocol without the preserve-mode option. An attacker could exploit this to install setuid or setgid files on the system, potentially leading to privilege escalation.

nvidia/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-NVFP4 — new model trending #28 on Hugging Face

NVIDIA released an NVFP4 4-bit quantized build of Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, a 125B-parameter MoE vision-language model, via Model Optimizer.

The checkpoint quantizes Qwen3.8-Flash-Next — a hybrid-attention (Gated DeltaNet and Qwen Sparse Attention) Mixture-of-Experts model with 125B total and 6B activated parameters, plus 51B n-gram embeddings and 4B MTP — using NVIDIA Model Optimizer v0.46.0. NVFP4 benchmarks stay close to FP8: GPQA Diamond 91.5 vs 92.0, MMMU Pro 78.3 vs 77.1, Terminal-Bench 2.1 82.9 vs 83.3. It targets Blackwell B200/B300 GPUs, runs on vLLM, supports 262K context extendable to 1M tokens, and is licensed under the NVIDIA Open Model License with Qwen Community License 1.0.

Hugging Face trending models · 14d agoModel release

What 50 open source projects taught us about security in the AI era

GitHub's Secure Open Source Fund Session 4 improved security across 50 open source projects using AI-assisted workflows, tooling, and funding.

GitHub reported outcomes from Session 4 of its Secure Open Source Fund, which covered 50 open source projects. Participating maintainers combined AI-assisted workflows, GitHub security tools, expert guidance, and direct funding to improve project security. The post frames lessons about securing open source maintenance in the AI era; no specific vulnerabilities or incidents are named in the announcement.

GitHub Blog · Security · Aug 13, 2026Industry1

Teaching Everyone to Fish for Tokens

Analysis argues open-source AI now depends heavily on Nvidia's financing, with a reported $26 billion bet shaping the open-weights ecosystem's future.

An Interconnects essay examines whether the open-source model recipe, exemplified by Ai2's Olmo and Nvidia's Nemotron releases, can become economically self-sustaining. It reports Nvidia is spending roughly $26 billion on near-open-source models to drive demand for its chips, and argues the open ecosystem faces an existential financing window over the next few years. The author predicts open models may fork toward efficiency, specialization, and on-prem enterprise agents rather than competing head-on with closed frontier labs.

Interconnects · Aug 17, 2026AI industry

Linux Detection Engineering - Fileless Execution

Elastic Security Labs reproduces five Linux fileless execution patterns, including memfd_create staging and in-memory kernel module loads, and maps each to Elastic Defend rules.

Elastic Security Labs reproduced five Linux fileless execution patterns using its FENIX tooling: memfd_create staging, interpreter one-liners, deleted binaries, and in-memory kernel module loads. Each pattern is mapped to the Elastic Defend detection rules that catch it. The post is part of the team's ongoing Linux detection engineering series.

Elastic Security Labs · 15d agoResearch

[webapps] Linuxfabrik monitoring_plugins_6.0.0 - SSRF

A public proof-of-concept exploit for an SSRF flaw in Linuxfabrik monitoring_plugins 6.0.0 appeared on Exploit-DB.

Exploit-DB listing 52653 discloses a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Linuxfabrik monitoring_plugins version 6.0.0, classified under web applications. A proof-of-concept exploit is publicly available. No CVE identifier or evidence of in-the-wild exploitation is provided in the listing.

Exploit-DB · 29d agoExploit / PoC

USN-8748-1: Linux kernel (NVIDIA) vulnerabilities

Ubuntu released USN-8748-1 patching multiple Linux kernel (NVIDIA) vulnerabilities across networking, file system, and crypto subsystems.

Ubuntu issued security notice USN-8748-1 fixing several Linux kernel vulnerabilities affecting the NVIDIA Tegra memory controller driver, hardware crypto device drivers, and network drivers, among others. Affected subsystems include GFS2, OCFS2, and SMB file systems, B.A.T.M.A.N. meshing, Ceph, Netfilter, Open vSwitch, IPv4/IPv6, RxRPC, SCTP, and TIPC. An attacker could potentially exploit these flaws to compromise the system.

Your phone or computer may soon ask how old you are

California's Digital Age Assurance Act forces Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android to collect age brackets from January 2027, with open-source exemptions pending.

California's Digital Age Assurance Act, signed in October 2025, requires major operating systems to collect user age brackets (under 13, 13-15, 16-17, 18+) and share non-identifying age signals with app developers starting January 1, 2027, with existing setups complying by July 1, 2027. AB1856, passed in late August 2026, would exempt open-source operating systems under GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses and awaits the governor's signature. Colorado, Illinois, and New York have similar age assurance measures, and the EFF has criticized the law for privacy and censorship concerns.

Malwarebytes Labs · 13d agoPolicy & legal

Re: Vulnerability fixes in util-linux-2.42.3

util-linux 2.42.3 includes vulnerability fixes, with a commit link shared for downstream tracking but no CVEs cited.

An oss-security post links a util-linux commit (286dd3ff41526b582ef48830de239dffbaa61f90) as part of the 2.42.3 vulnerability fix release. No CVE identifiers, flaw descriptions, or exploitation details are provided. The item is a routine open-source fix notification for downstream distributors.

oss-security · 11d agoVulnerability1

[AINews] Poolside gets $12B reverse-execuhire to NVIDIA; founders stay for $1B, employees go for $6B, Infraco scaling to 7GW neocloud

NVIDIA struck a $12B deal with AI coding startup Poolside, licensing its Model Factory and hiring 109 of its technical employees.

NVIDIA spent roughly $12B in an unusual reverse-execuhire of Poolside, licensing the company's Model Factory while hiring 109 of its ~115 technical staff; founders retain a $1B stake and employees receive about $6B. Poolside had raced to raise $2B to fund a 40,000 GB300 cluster after missing a six-week funding window, and founders argue frontier-scale training now requires an order of magnitude more compute plus contracted data center space. An infrastructure arm spun out in January 2026 is scaling toward 7GW as a neocloud. The newsletter also recaps OpenAI and Anthropic agent-platform releases.

Latent Space · 26d agoAI industry

USN-8760-1: Linux kernel (NVIDIA) vulnerabilities

Canonical issues USN-8760-1 patching multiple Linux kernel (NVIDIA) vulnerabilities across numerous subsystems and CPU architectures.

Canonical published USN-8760-1 to correct several Linux kernel (NVIDIA) vulnerabilities that an attacker could possibly use to compromise the system. The update fixes flaws spanning UAPI, the kernel build system, ARM32, ARM64, RISC-V, S390, and x86 architectures. Patched subsystems also include the block layer, cryptographic API, Compute Acceleration Framework, Intel NPU driver, ACPI and Bluetooth drivers, and the hardware random number generator core.

Ubuntu Security Notices · 1d agoAdvisory

We have a year to fix security everywhere

Blog post warns that cheap open-weight GLM 5.3-flash, once abliterated, could enable mass AI-driven vulnerability exploitation, urging industry-wide patching now.

An essay argues that Z.ai's open-weight GLM 5.3-flash—runnable locally on roughly $6k consumer hardware at 20-45 tokens/second—combined with 'abliterated' variants from groups like DeAlignAI that score 0% on HarmBench-320 puts dangerous hacking capability in nearly anyone's hands. GLM 5.3 scores 84.5% on CyberGym and 54.4% on ExploitBench, versus GPT-6 Astra's 100% and GPT-5.6 Sol's 78.5%, and the author cites evidence of frontier models exploiting real-world infrastructure. The author calls for using LLMs (Project Glasswing, Daybreak) to find and fix vulnerabilities industry-wide before adversaries weaponize cheap open models.

ThreatsDay: 296K IoT Botnet, 100+ Water Systems Targeted, SharePoint RCE Chain + 27 New Stories

Weekly ThreatsDay bulletin details a ShinyHunters-style social engineering hit on ReliaQuest, the 296,000-device Dysphoria IoT botnet, and several new malware families.

ReliaQuest confirmed a social engineering attack on August 22, 2026, in which an attacker used a fake SSO page and MFA push approval to gain brief view-only access to an identity dashboard, with tactics matching ShinyHunters, which has since listed the firm on its leak portal. The Shadowserver Foundation reported the Dysphoria botnet has compromised nearly 296,000 IoT devices for DDoS attacks and recently added residential proxy capability. Cisco Talos documented JWR, an operator-driven phishing-as-a-service framework linked to The Outsider that harvests credentials, identity documents, and 2FA codes over an encrypted WebSocket. New malware coverage includes the Octagon Android fraud bot ($1,400/month), the C2Looper Rust backdoor delivered via ClickFix, and the Aeternum loader that moved C2 to the Polygon blockchain.

The Hacker News · 14d agoMalware in the wild

$1 Million Sandbox Challenge Uncovers Linux Kernel Flaws

Vercel's $1M sandbox challenge surfaced two Linux kernel networking defects—one leaking host kernel memory, one crashing hosts—with CVEs pending.

Vercel ran a two-week, $1 million sandbox escape challenge (Aug 18–Sep 1) on its Firecracker-based microVM sandbox, receiving 1,285 reports and committing ~$325k in payouts (1 Critical, 7 High, 15 Medium, 49 Low validated so far). No attacker accessed real customer data. The most important filing found two independent Linux kernel networking stack defects—one leaks host kernel memory, the other deterministically crashes the host—with wide implications for cloud providers isolating workloads via the same kernel layer. Fixes are under private review with CVEs pending; Vercel also plans to open-source its agentic report-triage agent built on the Eve framework running Kimi K3.

SecurityWeek · 23h agoVulnerability1

12 Best CNAPP Platforms Compared (2026): Features & Pricing

Independent comparison of 12 CNAPP platforms finds identical estates draw quotes 2-3x apart; Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the only fully published per-resource option.

A vendor-independent buyer's guide compares twelve CNAPP platforms including Prisma Cloud, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Wiz, Uptycs, Aqua, Zscaler, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud on pricing mechanics, procurement leverage, and capability-per-dollar. It finds quotes swing 2-3x on identical estates because vendors define 'workload' differently. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highlighted as the only major with fully published per-resource rates.

GBHackers · 1d agoIndustry1

DPRK APTs: Ted backdoor and curlRAT target South Korean media and automotive sectors

Rapid7 uncovered a DPRK-linked Linux toolkit using a HAProxy-embedded ted backdoor, SSH keylogger, and curlRAT against South Korean media and automotive firms.

Rapid7 Labs identified a previously undocumented framework attributed with medium confidence to DPRK actors, targeting South Korean automotive and media organizations likely since early 2025. The toolkit embeds a backdoor compiled into HAProxy 2.8.12 using its filter API, plus trojanized crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd, an SSH keylogger storing credentials under /var/lib/sshd/, and a curl-based RAT with a watchdog thread. It enables remote command execution, malicious script injection into served webpages (a watering-hole loop), credential harvesting, and long-term surveillance. Hardcoded C2s are associated with APT37 via ThreatFox, and exposed groupware portals and mail servers align with Kimsuky tradecraft; the initial access vector and any CVE remain unconfirmed.

Rapid7 Blog · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Vali Cyber ZeroLock 5 brings MFA to the hypervisor command line

Vali Cyber released ZeroLock 5 adding CLI-MFA to protect VMware ESX and Linux hypervisors from insider threats and stolen credentials.

ZeroLock 5 introduces CLI-MFA, requiring time-based one-time passwords for file access, program execution, and network operations at the hypervisor command line on ESX and Linux hosts. The release targets ransomware and nation-state actor pivots to virtualization infrastructure, exemplified by ShinyHunters' shinysp1d3r RaaS platform that encrypts VMware ESX environments using stolen credentials and SSH keys. It adds remotely deployable collectors, reusable multi-site deployment blueprints, SIEM forwarding presets, and support for VCF and ESX 6.7+.

Help Net Security · 14d agoTools

Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root

A security write-up details how any user process on the Omarchy Linux setup can escalate privileges to root.

A post on 0xcc.io describes a local privilege escalation issue in Omarchy, the Arch-based Linux configuration, where any user process can escalate to root. The disclosure appears to describe a design-level weakness in the distribution's security model. No CVE identifier is mentioned in the available text.

Lobsters · security · 16d agoVulnerability

[AINews] AEF-1 standard emerges for Third Party Evaluators, as Xai, OpenAI, and Anthropic all cosign

xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic cosign the AEF-1 third-party evaluation standard while Dario Amodei proposes embedded evaluators for safety verification.

The AI Evaluator Forum published AEF-1, a baseline standard for independent third-party AI evaluations covering access, conflicts of interest, funding relationships, recusal, and transparency, cosigned by xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Dario Amodei wrote a rare personal blogpost proposing embedded evaluators such as METR with desks, badges, company laptops, and internal-risk-team-level access to verify safety commitments, plus democratic and global coordination frameworks. The roundup also covers the pacing debate: Bilal Chughtai left Google DeepMind arguing progress may outrun alignment, while critics including Aidan Gomez and Cohere push back against slowdowns and lab gatekeeping. Additional items include Cline Desktop's launch with open-weight model support.

Latent Space · 1d agoAI safety & security

cPanel LiteSpeed Web Server Vulnerability Allows Shared Server Users to Gain Root-Level Access

Critical LiteSpeed Enterprise flaw fixed in 6.3.7 lets low-privilege shared-hosting users escalate to root and bypass CageFS.

cPanel issued an urgent advisory for a critical privilege escalation in LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise versions before 6.3.7, allowing a low-privilege shared-hosting account to gain root-level server control and bypass tenant isolation controls including CloudLinux CageFS. Root access would let attackers access other hosted sites, steal databases and credentials, deploy phishing pages, and install backdoors. Administrators are urged to upgrade to 6.3.7 immediately via lsup.sh and to review privileged account activity, cron jobs, SSH keys, and system binaries; no CVE identifier was published.

Cyber Security News · 1d agoVulnerability

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: September 1, 2026

Help Net Security's September 1, 2026 roundup lists cybersecurity job openings at Google, Barclays, HUMAN and others across the US, Europe and Asia.

The weekly jobs roundup lists openings including a Google Security Engineer (Professional Services) role in the USA, a Cryptography Operations Engineer at Barclays in the UK, a Backend Engineer at HUMAN in Israel, and an AI Security Engineer at CPX in the UAE. Other listed roles span SOC analysis, SIEM engineering, cloud security, and network security across the USA, Ireland, India, Italy and Australia.

Help Net Security · 7d agoIndustry 2 sources

TPMSpy: Validation of Measured Boot Systems by Low-Level Tracing of TPM Usage

Researchers present TPMSpy, a platform-agnostic method validating TPM Measured Boot via low-level tracing, finding inconsistent Linux systemd measurements that break remote attestation and LUKS decryption.

An arXiv paper (2609.05011) introduces TPMSpy, a method that analyzes virtualized system–TPM interactions to independently reconstruct and validate TPM Event Logs without relying on the quoting mechanism, applicable to open and closed systems and demonstrated on Linux and Windows. A longitudinal analysis of Linux systems running systemd versions 245–258 (2020–2025) found wide divergence in Measured Boot usage, undocumented behavioral changes, and no common usage pattern. The authors report inconsistent measurement of user-space systemd services, which prevents reliable remote attestation and LUKS disk decryption on affected systems.

arXiv cs.CR · 12d agoResearch

Suspected China-Nexus Actor Exploits VMware vCenter Flaw, Deploys Babuk

QUIRSO attributes exploitation of VMware vCenter CVE-2026-59310 to a suspected China-nexus actor that hit 361 IPs in 47 countries, deploying backdoors and Babuk.

German incident response firm QUIRSOS assessed with moderate confidence that a suspected China-nexus actor, likely operating in UTC+08:00 hours, exploited VMware vCenter flaw CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS 9.8 directory traversal) beginning five days after Broadcom's July 29 patch. The campaign compromised 361 unique victim IPs across 47 countries, most in Germany, the US, Turkey, Iran, and France. The actor abused cron jobs, a XOR-obfuscated 'linuxFile' WebSocket backdoor with systemd/cron persistence, a JSP web shell, SSH authorized-keys manipulation, and a reverse SSH tool, with one Babuk deployment reported. A separate vCenter 'vcenter_admin' account creation consistent with CVE-2026-59309 exploitation was also observed from August 1.

The Hacker News · 29d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-59310CVE-2026-593091

Stealth rootkit targeting F5 BIG-IP could expose enterprise identity gateways

Sophos analyzed a stealth Linux rootkit that hides a web shell in memory on compromised F5 BIG-IP APM identity gateways, evading file-based detection.

Sophos analyzed a second-stage Linux rootkit implant found in compromised F5 BIG-IP APM environments running Apache and PHP, linked to exploitation of CVE-2025-53521, an unauthenticated RCE. The implant hooks Apache's PHP-loading process and serves modified in-memory versions of three legitimate webtop PHP files (apm_css.php3, full_wt.php3, webtop_popup_css.php3), leaving on-disk files untouched so hashes and integrity checks pass. It also establishes access via an authenticated local UNIX socket that can provide an interactive /bin/bash session. Experts warn compromised APM appliances, which handle federated SSO and terminate TLS at enterprise perimeters, could enable SSO token theft and lateral movement to trusted downstream applications.

CSO Online · 6d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2025-53521

PEEP Turns Chrome and Edge Into Post-Compromise Backdoors for Host Command Execution

SOCRadar disclosed PEEP, a post-exploitation Chromium extension toolkit that turns Chrome and Edge into host-level backdoors via native messaging and C2 polling.

SOCRadar researchers detailed PEEP, a Chromium-based post-exploitation toolkit masquerading as a 'Smart Bookmarks' extension injected directly into Chrome and Edge profiles by forging Secure Preferences integrity values, bypassing Web Store checks. A native-messaging host binary (nm_host.exe) extends the browser agent to host-level command execution, file management, credential theft, and session hijacking, while the extension polls C2 endpoints at 206.237.30.232 or xfjcc.fun every 30 seconds over plaintext HTTP and exfiltrates browsing history, cookies, and tab metadata. PEEP is derived from the open-source RedExt red teaming framework, adds PowerShell persistence scripts, and includes a Linux-targeting Python script, suggesting cross-platform intent. The activity is unattributed but contains Chinese-language artifacts; a C2 /health endpoint showed 34 agent entries and 10 active sessions.

The Hacker News · 8d agoMalware in the wild

Trusting-Trust Attack against an Entire Linux Distribution (via the strip utility)

ArXiv paper shows the trusting-trust compiler backdoor technique can compromise an entire Linux distribution via the strip utility.

The paper (arXiv 2607.24888) demonstrates that Ken Thompson's trusting-trust attack, long viewed as a compiler-specific threat, can backdoor an entire Linux distribution by targeting the strip utility. A compromised tool reproduces its backdoor in subsequent rebuilds of itself, generalizing the attack surface beyond compilers. The finding has supply-chain implications for build reproducibility and distribution trust, though it is a research result with no observed real-world exploitation.

Lobsters · security · 11d agoResearch